SAN ANGELO, Texas — The first jury trial in more than a decade in the West Texas town of Eldorado involves an alleged polygamist and an accusation of sexual assault of an underage bride, a far cry from the occasional drunken-driving cases that normally occupy the Schleicher County court system.

Attorneys on Monday will begin culling the largest jury pool ever called in Eldorado to try to find 14 people in a county of 2,800 who can set aside what they have heard about a polygamist sect whose alleged marriages involving underage girls triggered a police raid that swept more than 400 children into state custody last year.

Raymond Jessop, 38, will become the first man from the Yearning for Zion Ranch to go on trial here. He is charged with sexual assault of a child — an underage girl he allegedly married first — and faces up to 20 years in prison if convicted.

In all, 12 sect men have been charged with crimes ranging from failure to report child abuse to bigamy and sexual assault at the ranch, where women and girls wear braids and pastel prairie dresses. They have all denied wrongdoing.

The cases began after a woman in Colorado allegedly called a Texas domestic abuse hotline in March 2008 and pretended to be a teenage girl with a much-older husband who raped and beat her. State authorities swooped in, taking 439 children.

Seating a 12-person jury and two alternates for Jessop’s case might be difficult because most residents of the ranching community know one another, and national and international media coverage made the April 2008 raid impossible to ignore.

“Perhaps I should ask if anyone has not heard,” state District Judge Barbara Walther said at a pretrial hearing. “It’s extremely unlikely that we’ll have anyone who will say they have not heard about this trial.”

The county sent summonses to 300 potential jurors — nearly one-sixth of the county’s registered voters — in hopes of seating a jury there. If lawyers can’t get a full panel, the trial could be moved.

The last jury impaneled in Eldorado, back in the late 1990s, decided the punishment of a drug-possession defendant who pleaded guilty but wanted a jury to decide the penalty.

Few criminal cases go to trial in the county, where charges are mostly related to drugs or alcohol, said Schleicher County Clerk Peggy Williams.

FLDS facts

The sect: Members of the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, who believe polygamy brings glorification in heaven, historically have lived around the Arizona-Utah line. But the sect bought a ranch, which they called Yearning for Zion, on the outskirts of Eldorado, Texas, about six years ago.

The sect’s leader: Warren Jeffs, who is revered as a prophet by FLDS members, was captured in 2006 and convicted in Utah as an accomplice to rape. He is jailed in Arizona awaiting trial on charges related to underage marriages there and faces sexual assault and bigamy charges in Texas.

Currently: Hundreds of sect members, including many of the 439 children initially taken by authorities in the April 2008 raid, have returned to the ranch’s log-cabin-style homes. The trial will take place in sparsely populated Schleicher County.

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